Three vie to replace Broward’s public defender
No one likes defense lawyers, the saying goes. Until they need one.
The face of justice in Broward County is changing, significantly, for the first time in years. Voters are not only being asked to pick a new top prosecutor for the first time in 44 years — they are also being tasked with replacing the Broward’s public defender, chief legal advocate for those who are charged with crimes but cannot afford to hire their own lawyers.
Competing are two current employees of the office and a retired judge.
Gordon Weekes, 49, chief assistant public defender, has the current officeholder’s blessing and the benefit of being able to speak for the office on numerous issues, from calling attention to the conditions inside the jail and the disparate impact of various enforcement policies on nonwhite communities to more mundane issues, such as the office’s battle with the Broward clerk of courts over the distribution of fees.
Ruby Green, 33, who has been with the office since 2012, hasn’t been on the job as long as Weekes, but she argues she has enough experience and skill to handle the job. She also has earned the trust of her professional colleagues outside the office — this year she was elected president of the Broward Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
The final candidate is Tom Lynch, 69, a former assistant public defender who became a county court judge in 1984 and a circuit court judge in 1996. He retired from the bench in 2016, the same year his son, Michael Lynch, was elected, and started
his own practice focusing on mediation and expert testimony.
The three candidates agree that the most pressing issue for the office is providing representation for their clients, which means making sure the attorneys are both motivated and trained for the legal issues they’re likely to face.
They also agree that as defense lawyers, they face a more difficult time getting public support for the issues they find important — a community that wants to be tough on crime may not appreciate tax dollars going to the courtroom adversaries of the police and prosecutors.
“What the public eventually understands is, the work we do benefits everyone,” Weekes said. “They see us defending a criminal, but they realize that in challenging the evidence, in challenging the state, that is where justice occurs.” An officer who sees his evidence thrown out because it was collected in a way that violated the defendant’s constitutional rights is less likely to make the same mistake in the future, Weekes said.
Lynch said he would tackle training as a major initiative if he is elected. “I was trained by the best lawyers in Broward County,” he said. “And I have a host of successful civil and criminal defense lawyers willing to come into the Public Defender’s Office and help train some of our younger attorneys and better prepare them for the courtroom.” Lynch also said that unlike the current public defender, he would handle cases personally and make sure department heads did the same.
Green said she would focus on trying to secure assistance instead of prison sentences for hundreds of defendants accused of nonviolent crimes. “We need to work with community leaders and make the justice system into something that steers offenders into second-chance jobs and opportunities,” she said.
The job has been held since 2005 by Howard Finkelstein, a charismatic attorney with a public personal history of overcoming his demons of drug addiction, a journey he parlayed into a career of advocacy for poor people caught up in the justice system, people unlikely to get the same breaks he got after he hit bottom.
Finkelstein’s journey, helped politically in no small part by his constant presence as a legal analyst on WSVN-Ch. 7 (his “Help Me Howard” segments remain a popular feature after two decades), made him a popular figure in the courthouse, and he used that position to argue for the people most likely to be represented by his office: poor and minority communities.
The winner of the Aug. 18 primary will be decided by Democratic voters only and is all but certain to be the next public defender. The only opponent in November is a write-in candidate, Brion Ross, whose candidacy closes the primary off to Republicans and independents.